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Touchy-Feely Robot Hand

Intel shows off a robot hand that can sense before it grabs and hold things with a gentle touch.

June 13, 2008

Robots are mainstays in factories and manufacturing plants,
but in most parts of the world, they aren’t found in homes, interacting with
people. Part of the problem, says Intel senior researcher Josh Smith, is that today’s robots
don’t have the capability to perform spontaneous close-range interactions well.
Grabbing a silicon wafer is one thing, but gently helping an elderly person out
of a chair is something completely different.

So last September, Smith and his team developed a technology
they call pre-touch,
which can sense the location of an object about an inch away from the robot
grabber. Pre-touch electrodes, positioned at the ends of robot fingers, emit a
small electrical field. When a conducting object, such as metal or anything
with water in it, comes within range, it changes the fingers’ electric field.
Algorithms process this change in electric field and essentially create a
visual map of an object’s position.

At a recent Intel Research event in Mountain View, CA,
Smith showed off his latest version of the robot hand. In addition to the
pre-touch sensors, he’s added a strain gauge that measures the amount of force
exerted by each robotic finger. The force applied by each finger can indicate
to the robot that an object is slipping or that it’s securely encircled by all
fingers. Once the object is positioned well, the mechanical fingers close
around it, squeezing only hard enough to keep the object from slipping. See a video
of the action below.

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I’m a freelance science and technology journalist based in San Francisco. I was the information technology editor at MIT Technology Review from 2005 to 2009, where I wrote more than 350 stories about emerging technologies in areas that include… More computers, mobile devices, displays, communication networks, Internet startups, and more.
I was an integral part of a technology trend-spotting team, highlighting early work in reality mining, plasmonics, adaptable networks, and racetrack memory. I’ve contributed to The Economist, U.S News & World Report, Gizmodo, New Scientist, Science News, and SELF, among other publications. And I’m currently working on a book with Nathan Eagle called Reality Mining: Using Big Data to Engineer a Better World (MIT Press).

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